By Rachel More

BERLIN (Reuters) -Heidelberg Materials has struck a deal to buy U.S.-based Giant Cement Holding and its subsidiaries for $600 million, it said on Thursday, the latest acquisition by the German cement maker to expand its foothold in the United States.

Heidelberg Materials, the world’s second-largest cement maker, and larger peer Holcim have both been singling out the U.S. market as a place to grow aggressively, banking on what they say will be prolonged construction activity due to infrastructure projects and economic stimulus.

Shares of European construction firms have risen on hopes that Donald Trump’s presidency could be positive for construction activity in the United States.

“The acquisition … will further strengthen our cement footprint in the growing Southeastern U.S. and New England markets,” said Chris Ward, CEO of Heidelberg Materials North America.

The transaction, to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, is expected to contribute around $60 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in the first year of operation, “before significant additional synergies”, the company said in a statement.

The German building materials company adds Giant Cement to its growing list of assets in the country, after it bought three U.S. companies in June for $380 million in total.

“The valuation (10x forward EBITDA) is not cheap, but the U.S. market has an attractive structure and growth potential,” Davy Research wrote in a note.

Shares in Heidelberg Materials were up 1%.

Heidelberg Materials had scaled back its U.S. presence three years ago by selling cement factories in the west of the country for $2.3 billion.

Giant Cement Holding was owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s Spanish cement and real estate unit Inmocemento, which will book a capital gain of $145 million on the asset sale, the Spanish company said in a separate filing to the Spanish stock market regulator.

Inmocemento was spun off from Slim’s Spanish conglomerate FCC earlier this month.

(Reporting by Rachel More and Javi West Larrañaga; Editing by Inti Landauro, Christoph Steitz and Susan Fenton)